Did you bump into any teens when you were out buying your night cream this year?
2024 was the year of the Sephora tween, which saw members of Gen Alpha (those born in 2010 or younger) embrace beauty en masse. One executive memorably witnessed an eight year-old waddling around a boutique in New York this past fall, sniffing the Byredoes.
But the fascination and outrage over ever-younger beauty shoppers obscured the truth about beauty shopping in 2024, which is that there were more people shopping for more products than ever before. Beauty sales grew about 5 percent year-on-year across the board, and online sales grew more than double that, according to an October report from Nielsen IQ. Big box stores like Walmart, Target and Amazonâs growing beauty marketplace have attracted prestige and indie brands to become attractive launch destinations. Even department stores seem to be dusting off their counters. And while the majority of sales occurred in store â about $61 billion, to onlineâs $43 billion, per Nielsen â âonline growth actually outperforms in-store in all categories except for the beauty Specialty channel.â
In other words, except for stores like Sephora and Ulta, the juggernauts of beauty-specific retail, which both saw lifts in sales this year as they expanded buzzy categories like bodycare and fragrance and onboarded new brands â the former took on cult-cool brands like Fara Homidi and Dieux, while the latter added Naturium and RMS Beauty this year, and will launch Tatcha in January. The holiday season provided jolts in foot traffic to Ulta and Sally Beauty Supply, according to insights firm Placer.ai, which helped to power a theory posed in a recent CBRE report that retail foot traffic will exceed pre-pandemic levels in 2025. (Get any beauty products as holiday gifts?)
We want it all: Body washes dosed with fine fragrance, fine fragrances crafted to smell like dessert glazes, glazes made with peptides to plump and shellac the lips. Next year will see companies and retailers try to deepen their influence with target markets like skincare-underserved Gen Xers or Byredo-obsessed tween boys. The key word is omnichannel; not just a storefront and a website and a social presence but an umbrella strategy that ties all three together. Despite the nascence of TikTok Shop, merchants were delighted to find that customers were just as likely to shop in-store after spotting a viral product online. If an eight year old should wander into your beauty boutique, know youâre doing something right.
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How Big Box Retailers Won Over Premium Beauty Brands: Mass retailers like Target and Walmart have invested heavily in their beauty offerings, attracting a fresh crop of indie brands â as well as increasing their overall basket size. For brands wanting a slice of the action, scaling up is necessary.
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The Beauty Slowdown Has Come for Indie Retailers: Credo Beauty, Goop, and Thirteen Lune are among the smaller, independent beauty retailers responding to US market headwinds.
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Inside Ulta Beautyâs Turnaround Plan: As Sephora and Amazon encroach on its territory and draw younger shoppers, Ulta Beautyâs investor day covered strategies to enhance physical stores and keep Gen-Z and Gen Alphaâs attention.
The Business of Beauty Haul of Fame; Beauty Behind Bars: How anti-theft measures at drugstores created a new kind of influencer.
A Perfume Brand Asks, âWhat China Downturn?â: Despite local pullback from premium brands, cult fragrance maker Perfumer H has big plans for the region. First up, a Shanghai mega-store, slated to open early next year.
The Business of Beauty Haul of Fame; MAC Teaches Sex Ed: A new campaign shared exclusively with The Business of Beauty aims to shock and awe audiences⦠and remind them of the brandâs long history as a provocateur.
How TikTok Shop Killed the MLM Model: TikTok Shop has created fresh opportunities for enterprising creators to make fast money, changing the landscape for both digital marketers and multi-level marketing companies.
Inside Department Storesâ Plans to Bring Beauty Customers Back: During the 2024 holiday season, stores like Macyâs and Nordstrom will do more than display gift options. Theyâll also offer a glimpse of what the counter of the future could look like.
